


Fleeting

by FreeShavocadoo



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: A brief moment in the relationship, Introspection, M/M, Pen͂a is a mess, moderate fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 13:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18757414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeShavocadoo/pseuds/FreeShavocadoo
Summary: There was always something oddly mosaic about the man he saw sat in front of him in meetings, speaking with a clipped and sombre tone, in comparison to the one who absent-mindedly swirls his finger across the top of his glass and stares at Pen͂a with complete alertness over the rare after-work drink. Sometimes Pen͂a felt as though he knew a Carrillo nobody else quite did, one that had eyes that could soften and fingers that could dance across the palm of Pen͂a’s hand under the security of a pitch-black sky in a police car.





	Fleeting

For a man with a multitude of commitment issues, Pen͂a loved a good routine.

From a morning cigarette to an afternoon with a whore he’s far too familiar with, he’s up to his neck in a routine of bad habits; he has a penchant for self-destructive behaviour but is still too morally conscious to let it consume him entirely. Columbia, much like the humid summer weather, had a way of crawling across your skin and consuming every inch of it in unbearable humidity until you felt like you’d never wash it off. Any difference Pen͂a felt like he was making was immediately dashed by the death of several more civilians, police officers and innocents. So he’d light himself another cigarette, pick up another phone call that always landed at the same exact minute every day, drowning his sorrows in alcohol and flesh in the all-consuming way he’d become so used to.

Horacio Carrillo was a different story entirely.

For all of Pen͂a’s irresponsibility and fondness for taking afternoon breaks when he should be on the job, Carrillo is so level-headed he’s a borderline machine, consumed entirely by his work. The man was unbearably calm and enigmatic, being more malleable one day with eyes that would crinkle in the soft warmth of the afternoon sun, only to change to an unreadable gaze with a hard-set jaw, with a demeanour so ferocious Pen͂a sometimes wondered if he was in danger around the man.

There was always something oddly mosaic about the man he saw sat in front of him in meetings, speaking with a clipped and sombre tone, in comparison to the one who absent-mindedly swirls his finger across the top of his glass and stares at Pen͂a with complete alertness over the rare after-work drink. Sometimes Pen͂a felt as though he knew a Carrillo nobody else quite did, one that had eyes that could soften and fingers that could dance across the palm of Pen͂a’s hand under the security of a pitch-black sky in a police car.

“Agent Pen͂a?”

His voice is smooth, level and deliciously distracting, as per usual. Sitting in a car for over an hour in the baking afternoon sun hadn’t been top of Pen͂a’s priority list, but when Carrillo had swiftly reminded him that they were corroborating information one of his CI’s had told him, with the slight tone of irritation he always got when speaking about Pen͂a’s informants, he’d conceded.

“Yes?” He replies, dragging languidly on a cigarette and staring out of the window.

“You’re distracted.” Carrillo’s eyes stare holes into the back of his head, not scathing but _knowing_ , which is somehow worse.

Carrillo never projected any form of judgement onto Pen͂a, no disgust or scorn. He would, of course, tell him exactly what he thought when the moment called for it, but never in the way others tended to speak to him. Pen͂a knew he was a certified mess, he didn’t really think anyone was more qualified than himself to pass judgement. They all enjoyed making their jokes until they needed the information his informants gave.

“Pen͂a,” Carrillo’s finger nudges his cheek, such a small but somehow loaded gesture, “what is it?”

When Pen͂a turns to meet his eyes, he’s not sure what he’s expecting. The sun is shining through the car window, reds and oranges bouncing across Carrillo’s serene face, his dark eyes dancing with colour and his mouth turning up ever so slightly at the corners, as if he knows just how much he _ruins_ Pen͂a. It’s like the wind is sucked from his lungs.

“Not really much to do here than think,” Pen͂a responds, his voice raspy from his shaky inhale, “is there?”

“I suppose.” Carrillo replies with a small smile, looking out of the window with a small exhale.

_The bastard is laughing at me._

“Something funny?” Pen͂a questions, attempting to sound neutral, yet surprising himself with the confrontational tone that comes out of his mouth.

“No, Javier.”

He always manages to make Pen͂a believe that the past couple of years has been a haze he’s imagined in a drunken stupor, a ridiculous dream that he can’t quite remove from his memory. But he knows those hands, rough fingertips that are surprisingly gentle as they drag up Pen͂a’s back to grip onto the hair at the nape of his neck when he kisses him as though he’s a man starved. The lack of control that he exhibits when he’s lost in the moment, wanting so badly he’s nearly begging and it takes every fibre of Pen͂a’s being not to just say the words he’s never said genuinely to anyone before.

He never has.

“Hmm.” Pen͂a responds, becoming mildly irritated as the fabric of his shirt sticks to his back and makes his already uncomfortable feeling go from moderate to severe. He’s not sure if he wants to beat Carrillo senseless or fuck him senseless. Or more worryingly, he thinks, just let the capable arms of a man he knows so well and not at all, wrap around him tightly in the dead of the night in his apartment.

The soft laugh breaks him from his reverie, a laugh that drifts through the air, accompanied by crinkled eyes and such a bright and genuine smile that Pen͂a feels like he did the first time the man wrestled Pen͂a out of his shirt and whispered compliments he didn’t think the man was capable of.

“Horacio,” he begins, his voice breaking, though it’s not embarrassing when Carrillo turns to look at him with eyes so soft he feels like he’s eighteen again, “you’re so-,”

Carrillo moves forward with the expert speed only he can muster up, half dragging Pen͂a across the car seat to kiss him with such ferocity that Pen͂a can’t even remember what he was irritated at to begin with. A needy noise coming from Carrillo is enough for Pen͂a to lose all of his co-ordination, his hand moving to find purchase somewhere and then, he goes and presses against the car horn.

_Fucking hell._

Carrillo laughs gently into Pen͂a’s neck, nuzzling softly and gently kissing the exposed and unbearably warm skin.

The time he’d spent away in Spain was enough to have driven Pen͂a to near insanity multiple times, always waking from dreams of pitch-black eyes and strong hands, only to stare longingly at an empty bed, or worse, walk past an office no longer occupied by Carrillo in the daytime. No furtive glances or subtle body language, no unwavering trust.

“I missed you, Javier.” He says so earnestly that it almost makes Pen͂a have to resist an urge to cry, a little. The only person who calls him Javier in _just_ the right way, every single time, the tone of light bemusement and affection forever intoxicating.

“I missed you too.” Pen͂a says, wishing that he was the type of person who could use his words properly, who could say what he felt without stumbling irreversibly and ruining everything.

Carrillo’s thumb brushes delicately over the palm of Pen͂a’s hand, slow and deliberate, Carrillo’s eyes burning in a way reminiscent of their relationship in earlier days when Carrillo had less patience and purposefulness in his touches, too wound up from his job to be anything beyond intense and consuming. But this is different. His gaze is careful and calculating, his touches don’t seem like they’re under the threat of being withheld. Pen͂a was under no illusions as to the secrecy of their relationship, the danger of it. But of all the partners he’d had, men and women, older and younger, Horacio Carrillo was his burning sun, unavoidable, inescapable and inevitable.

He opens his mouth to finally let loose the words he’d never uttered before, to let there be something that grounded the moment permanently, the grasp of impending danger always looming over their heads left Pen͂a more worried about a prospective future than he’d ever been.

“Don’t.” Carrillo says gently, stroking Pen͂a’s cheek with a fond look. “You don’t have to say it.”

Somehow, it fits them perfectly. Pen͂a isn’t the type to say those things, always too consumed in instant gratification and ignorant of consequence. Carrillo is consumed by powers he sees as far superior to love, not to say he’s invulnerable to it, but that it is secondary to many other things in his life. But here they were.

Carrillo’s hand slips under Pen͂a’s shirt near his upper chest, resting there as Carrillo’s eyes say more than his mouth ever will, more than Pen͂a’s mouth ever will. Pen͂a’s hand moves over Carrillo’s slowly, squeezing as they rest their foreheads together in the dead of the night in Medellin.

Temporary? Yes. But it was more than either of them could’ve hoped for, and Javier Pen͂a would live in the shadow of Horacio Carrillo happily until the inevitable happened.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so late to this pairing but I cannot even imagine watching them together and not assuming they are in love????


End file.
